About the Deck and Fence Business from the founder of GardenStructure.com

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Honorability-crediting Designers and Builders

Credit Designers-- It's only fair!

Designers, Builders, photographers and contractors all have a stake in and claim credit to their work. At times--the lines of protocol are a little fuzzy.

It goes something like this normally.

If you designed it or contracted the design and your crews installed it you can claim it as your own work. If you designed it... claim the design-- If you built it... Claim the installation--if you contracted it... Claim the contract.

But not...

If you were the landscape contractor--you can claim the entire job as your own--even if you didn't contract, design or pay for the design of the project or even install all the elements.

Now, I want to get this right. Photography and Stone work by Markville Landscaping, plantings by Markville Landscaping. The original Concept designs were by Elizabeth Tschoppe Garden Design and the woodwork detailing, shop drawings and installation was by Winterburn Group (GardenStructure.com--before the web site was developed).I can tell you that this company featured our work on the cover of their brochures for a few years--without credit.

We chatted about numerous jobs over the years--however the owner always wanted credit--as he assumed it on this job, which simply wasn't right. Since I knew he wasn't giving us credit for the work we did, we simply refused to do any more work for him.

This job is about 10 years old now. Water under a very old bridge. Nowadays we would shut someone down for just that kind of thing... but it doesn't seem this guy has made millions from claiming our work was his own--likely just barely stayed in business. In our original area of operations we are likely one of the most emulated of companies... we are happy to be so well respected by our competition.